seven crew remaining aboard were hurt. The C-130 was en route from Sewart Air Force Base, at Smyrna, Tennessee to Myrtle Beach Air Force Base, South Carolina, when the accident occurred. Most of the plane's parachutes were stacked near the door and were carried over the side by the decompression. Sheriff Ray Noland stated that an open parachute was seen drifting down near Sevierville, Tennessee, and deputies searching for the crewman's body found a parachute, a seat and the door ~two miles N of state highway 73, E of Gatlinburg. 9 March An armed U. S. Army Bell HU-1B Huey escorting U. S. Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara into "the heart of the Communist-infested Mekong River Delta" in South Vietnam, crashes into the Bassac River, killing the enlisted door gunners, who apparently drown. The helicopter goes down just as McNamara lands in another chopper with Maj. Gen. Hguyen Khanh, head of South Vietnam's military government. The Huey's engine apparently stalls, losing power just as the helicopter executes a sharp sweeping turn upward after making a low level pass over some trees while looking for snipers. The Huey plunges into the river, sinks immediately, with loss of the gunners. The officer-pilots escape and are rescued. In hospital they are found to have suffered only minor injuries. Some members of the SecDef's party witness the accident but McNamara does not. He states later that he is "grieved beyond words" over the loss. 15 March A Blue Angels pilot is killed during an attempted emergency landing at Apalach Airport near Apalachicola, Florida when his Grumman F-11A Tiger, BuNo 141883 (?), experiences difficulties while transiting from West Palm Beach, Florida back to the Blue Angels home base at NAS Pensacola, Florida. Lt. George L. Neale, 29, who flew in the Number Four slot position of the diamond formation, was returning from a demonstration at West Palm Beach with one other of the six team jets and a Douglas R5D Skymaster support plane when he radios Tyndall Air Force Base, near Panama City, Florida, for emergency landing permission when he suffers mechanical problems S of Apalachicola. But, spotting the local airport, he attempts a landing there, ejecting on final approach at 1115 hrs. as the fighter comes down ~250 yards short of the runway. Although he clears the airframe at ~150–200 feet altitude, his chute does not have sufficient time to deploy and he